| The proper examination of whether or not leadership can be learned is important as many colleges and universities attempt to develop future leaders. Historic leadership research would argue that leadership is an innate skill. However, contemporary leadership research argues that leadership is a learnable skill.;The purpose of this project was to capture a glimpse of student leadership growth and development during a for-credit, leadership course by comparing a control group to an experimental group which received an intervention. The intervention was a 16 week, for-credit academic leadership course that utilized the tenets of the Social Change Model of Leadership (SCM) along with service to the community, theoretical, and application-based projects. The primary question of this study was can leaders be trained? To test this question, four hypotheses were developed. The first dealt with the comparison between the experimental group and the control group. The final three hypotheses tested only the experimental group and compared age, class standing, and gender to measure the impact of those variables on leader development.;This quantitative study utilized the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale, Revised Version 2 (SRLS-R2) as a pre-test and post-test for both groups. The results indicated that the intervention positively impacted the experimental group scores on the SRLS-R2 when compared to the scores of the control group at a high level of significance of p=.004. The overall scores for the remaining hypotheses showed that age, class standing, and/or gender of the experimental group played no significant role in the development of Group A's leadership development. They seemed to learn about leadership at a similar pace.;The findings imply that the students in this project were aligned with a postindustrial view of leadership. Also, the students understood that service was part of their existence and understood that group projects were actually leadership performances. Most importantly, the findings outlined that the leadership skills found in the SCM can be learned in a structured, intentional course. |
